A garden in space: Project Melissa

Long-distance voyages into space have been impossible to date because of the great quantity of food, water and oxygen that the crew needs to survive. Through Project Melissa, Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative, this problem would turn into a problem of the past. Melissa is the creation of an artificial ecosystem that generates oxygen, water and vegetable foods by recycling organic residues, urine, feces and CO2. Although Melissa is currently only being used to evaluate the production of oxygen, the complete process will be very long and complex. This project was inaugurated June 4 at one of Barcelona, Spain’s universities, the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB. It’s the first laboratory that intends to reproduce this world of total recycling and evaluate the best technologies for obtaining oxygen and food, an initiative of the European Agency of Space, defrayed by the members of the organization, in Spain.